Increase in life expectancy and subsequent increase in nutritional deficiencies have created an increased interest in nutritional supplements. Growing awareness for better nutrition and a need for a healthy lifestyle results in a demand for accurate consumption of food supplements such as proteins, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, probiotics, and the like. Furthermore, consuming the correct quantity of the supplements may have health implications as well. Consuming an insufficient quantity of the supplements may not provide the expected benefit, while taking an excessive quantity may have detrimental effects on the consumer taking the supplements. In some cases, the consumer does not know which supplements will be beneficial and thus may take supplements that provide no benefit or may even cause harm to the consumer.
Consumers are increasingly demanding healthy and convenient lifestyle solutions, thus making dietary and sports supplements a preferred options to meets this need. Largest markets for dietary supplements include Asia Pacific, North America and Europe. For example, about 50% of Americans use dietary supplements on a regular basis to improve their health. About 22% of Americans engage in physical activities of 60 minutes a day, and repeatedly consume sports drinks and supplements. The average yearly amount spent on herbs, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other pills (purchased without a physician's prescription) is 35 billion dollars. Nevertheless, recent research shows that customization and personalization is the need of the hour for nutraceuticals, specifically in developed markets such as US and Europe. Moreover consumers are seeking more variety and benefits from delivery methods beyond those possible through traditional tablet and pills technologies.
In addition, there are significant disparities when it comes to consumption and user experience in the dietary and sport supplements industry. Consumption management is one challenging arena. Disparities in user experience may, in some cases, be related to lack of knowledge of how the human body functions, and what are its ongoing nutritional diverse needs to support optimized health and body performance. Mastering such complex knowledge and understanding may require years of study. When a consumer decides to base his/her consumption on scientific data, the user will typically encounter an excess amount of data which may be incoherent or difficult to understand, and many different approaches to what an optimal consumption includes.
In another arena, dietary and sport supplements may be consumed in various forms, for example, capsules, pills, powders, gel caps and tablets among others. There are inherent difficulties associated with these consumption methods. For example, storage and handling of dietary supplements is challenging. Dietary and sport supplements are usually packaged in boxes of 60-120 servings, or provided in very large and inconvenient whey protein cans. Some supplements contain multi-vitamins and multiple ingredients, but most supplements contain a single ingredient. These large packages may cause a user to store stacks of supplements boxes, which may eventually end up not being used, or expired. In another example, users improvise methods to pack along a single serving of supplements such as whey protein powder to location of their physical workout, e.g. using small plastic bags. This phenomenon also leads to inaccurate consumption of supplements. Furthermore, when powder chunks are not perfectly dissolved in water, an unpleasant drinking experience may be caused.
Some consumers have wallowing difficulties—research shows that 40% of the Americans have difficulty to swallow pills. In addition, pills or tablets that compose many ingredients tend to be too big to be swallowed smoothly.
Another challenge is related to after taste. Multiple times after consuming dietary supplements, one may suffer from an after-taste of flavors, for example if the outer coating of a pill or tablet has dissolved before reaching the small bowel.
Different approaches exist for consumption of dietary and nutritional supplements, and a consumer may find it difficult to determine the optimal consumption plan. Some users may be unaware of bodily functions ongoing nutritional needs that are required to support an optimized healthy body performance. Supplements are prepared for consumption in a plurality of preparation methods. One of the methods includes mixing supplements with a liquid or beverage and drinking the supplements that dissolve into the beverage. The supplements may be provided in a powder form, a liquid form, a powder and liquid combination form or other forms. Most supplements that are mixed with beverages to enable consumption are provided in large quantities with a scoop. The consumer adds the supplements into the beverage, mixes and drinks the mixture. Use of the scoop by the consumer to add the supplements into the beverages may cause inexperienced consumers to mix too much supplements or too little supplements with the beverages, thus causing the supplement consumption experience to be lacking. It is difficult to maintain an accurate log of the amount of supplements consumed, leading to incorrect amounts of supplements at inappropriate times that may be consumed.
Dissolving of supplements in the beverage requires excessive mixing and shaking to ensure optimal dissolving of the supplements in the beverage. Some supplements, especially when added at an incorrect amount to a beverage, require constant shaking and mixing during the consumption of the beverage. Such a need to continuously shake and mix may result in spillage and loss of supplements and beverage when the container is not properly covered or closed, or when the container does not comprise a cover.
Some supplements are consumed by swallowing the whole supplement, for example pills or capsules. The swallowing of the supplements may prove difficult, for example for small children and/or elderly individuals. Some solutions exist, such as chewable supplements, e.g. chewable vitamin candies. However, consuming these still requires certain motor skills that could impede consumption of the supplement due to age or physical disabilities. Consumption of supplements by swallowing may require the consumer to take excessive or insufficient amounts of the supplement, which may cause the consumer unwanted side effects of the consumption. Monitoring the amount of supplements a consumer is required to consume for optimal nutrition may be difficult or inaccurate when consuming by swallowing the supplements.
Consumption of high nutritional value formulations of dietary and/or sport supplement in the form of beverage, provides an advantageous combination of taste, convenience and health. It would be advantageous to provide a method and system that allow simple monitoring of a user's supplement consumption.